FAIRBANKS — Going barefoot is one of many kid-friendly aspects of Wild Rose Summer Camp, and a number of campers were doing just that Friday morning.

Situated on a 100-acre farmstead, the campsite is circled by a sloping green field of knee-high brome grass. Two tall canvas-covered teepees and a large star-shaped sunshade provide shelter and overlook a bucolic vista of woods, hills and sky.

Marking a decade of operation, Wild Rose Summer Camp director Susan Kerndt said she started the camp for her children and to give other children the opportunity to do the many, ever-changing outdoor camp projects.

“I’m a Waldorf teacher,” she explained. “It is a type of education that is hands-on with creative art, music and working through stories.”

The camp is a family affair. Kerndt is assisted by three of her four children: Cody, 20, Wyatt, 18, and Emma, 16, all camp veterans. The youngest Elsa, 9, is one of the campers, and Kerndt’s husband, Eric Mayo, serves as an important backup during his off-work hours.

Several of the camp’s other counselors are former Wild Rose campers.

Each morning, campers start the day hiking with counselors through a hayfield from their drop-off area to the campsite.

Camp activities vary daily and include a wide variety of hands on arts and crafts including tie-dyeing, felting with wool, papermaking from plants, block printing, marbling, candle dipping, etc. There are games, hiking, nature study, plant and bird identification, insect and garden study as well as beekeeping, puppetry and storytelling. And there’s always lots of mud to play in.

If that all sounds overwhelming, it isn’t.

“We try to have some focus and then break out with some freedom,” Kerndt said.

Each session, campers construct a new mud oven, often an elaborate affair depicting dragons, birds, lizards, octopi, crocodiles, fish, castles or whatever campers dream up.

“They’re all different from session to session,” said Kerndt, who has a photo album filled with pictures of past ovens.

Campers also construct simple woodburning kilns from mud.

The mud building gives campers the sense that they can do make or build an oven or kiln themselves, Kerndt explained.

“It builds confidence,” she said. “The whole goal of camp is to be creative and build confidence. They feel so good about themselves when they make something.”

Another weekly activity is harvesting vegetables from the family’s large CSA (Community Shared Agriculture) garden and preparing the produce for delivery. Campers are broken into crews for washing, bunching and cutting, while others weed, learn plant identification or help build up the garden’s compost pile.

Group, craft and play activities differ from week to week, and community guests often share their scientific or artistic know-how on subjects from entomology to pottery.

On Friday morning, the camp was buzzing. Clay whistles and rattles were being removed from the cooled, earthen kiln, and whole wheat rolls patted into shape by campers were being baked in the large mud oven shaped in the fantastical form of a puffer fish.

“We named him Sushi Bob Puffer because we couldn’t decide between all the names,” said Kasey Casort, 11, who is attending Wild Rose camp for her third summer.

Casort, like many of the Wild Rose campers, keeps coming back because “We do so much fun stuff.”

Many of the campers sported bright tie-dyed T-shirts, a previous day’s project.

At one table, Emma Mayo was passing out sheets of paper for children making books with their own handmade paper.

Nearby, a ball game was in progress next to an energetic jump rope session.

A natural dye station was in continual use as campers tie dyed silk scarves and loops of string in colorful dye pots prepared from dried flowers, barks, bugs and onions.

Riley Ford, 11, was especially proud of the scarf he created in shades of yellow, purple, red and orange, pointing out it’s bull’s eye center.

The drying line soon took on a festive air with bright scarves waving in the breeze next to tissue paper lanterns.

Shortly before lunch a whistle called campers into the hayfield for puppet play practice of a Rudyard Kipling tale, “The Elephant’s Child.”

Kerndt read the story aloud while directing campers who were manipulating giant-sized giraffe, crane, crocodile and elephant puppets in small teams. Another half-dozen or so youngsters frolicked individually through the assemblage, waving paper Kola Kola bird puppets attached to long bamboo poles.

On the edge of the action, a group of self-taught musicians added to the drama by banging drums, maracas, a xylophone and sticks at the appropriate moments.

Running through the natural play stage was 9-year-old Lily Brechan’s favorite role.

“There wasn’t a place we really had to be at some time,” she said, “and we got to run a lot.”

For more information about Wild Rose Summer Camp, contact Kerndt at 479-6363.

Contact staff writer Mary Beth Smetzer at 459-7546.